| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: and then, ag'in, they can be too mean.'
That night, while grandmother was getting supper, we opened
the package Mrs. Shimerda had given her. It was full of little
brown chips that looked like the shavings of some root.
They were as light as feathers, and the most noticeable
thing about them was their penetrating, earthy odour.
We could not determine whether they were animal or vegetable.
`They might be dried meat from some queer beast, Jim.
They ain't dried fish, and they never grew on stalk or vine.
I'm afraid of 'em. Anyhow, I shouldn't want to eat anything that
had been shut up for months with old clothes and goose pillows.'
My Antonia |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: he believe? Had he repented of his unbelief? Was he now there? There
in the realms of eternal peace and blessedness?" she thought.
"Father, tell me how it happened," she asked through her tears.
"Go! Go! Killed in battle, where the best of Russian men and
Russia's glory were led to destruction. Go, Princess Mary. Go and tell
Lise. I will follow."
When Princess Mary returned from her father, the little princess sat
working and looked up with that curious expression of inner, happy
calm peculiar to pregnant women. It was evident that her eyes did
not see Princess Mary but were looking within... into herself... at
something joyful and mysterious taking place within her.
War and Peace |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: never has had it. That makes MY attitude" - she paused as thinking
how to express it, then said simply - "all wrong."
"Come once again," he pleaded.
"Will you give him his candle?" she asked.
He waited, but only because it would sound ungracious; not because
of a doubt of his feeling. "I can't do that!" he declared at last.
"Then good-bye." And she gave him her hand again.
He had got his dismissal; besides which, in the agitation of
everything that had opened out to him, he felt the need to recover
himself as he could only do in solitude. Yet he lingered -
lingered to see if she had no compromise to express, no attenuation
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